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Why do wireless carriers knock on my door in a major city trying to sell 5G home internet service?
(links.hackliberty.org)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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I heard this meme in his voice.
30 miles south of LA, my choices were:
- $65 for DSL through AT&T
- $75 for Cable Internet (That they called Fiber) through Charter's ancient network
- $30 for TMo 5G when added to my family plan.
The TMo had more than double the speed. We need competition in this space. All the legacy companies are fat, slow, and lazy.
All the legacy companies are fat, slow, and lazy.
Also often incompetent.
But latency. If you're into online gaming, that would be a detriment.
Also I guarantee most people are still ok on 30Mbps. A 1080p Netflix stream consumes like 4Mbps.
I was concerned about latency too but no difference and I've had it for I think a year now. Legitimately the best value for decent internet in my area.
That's fair, it only matters if you're extremely competitive like competitive FPS etc. I'm too old to care that much anymore 🤣
I mean I played Apex at the time. Ping remained at 40-50 towards the nearest server. Probably says more about the state of the infrastructure though.
Edit: Distance to server was about 1k miles for reference.
That's prolly what the long would be anyway with server that far lol. Sound like distance issue here
Because these idiots keep putting services on top of ISP-heavy areas instead of deploying where there is zero competition. I.e., where they could potentially gain actual new business.
Sorry. I’m a little jaded after decades of access to only one viable ISP.
No, don’t be. I’m fed up with the US handing over billions of dollars to telcos for essentially nothing.
Well you see... We are a capitalist society where the taxpayer funds corporate capex and then corpo parasite price gouges the taxpayer via oligopoly.
This is what we in the industry call a healthy eco system.
The reason this doesn’t make sense to me is 5G will always have a much higher latency than any wired alternative
Not true. Really crappy wired solutions (because the provider's network is poorly maintained, or poorly designed) can easily be worse than a wireless solution. However for the sake of argument, lets assume that both the wired and wireless provider both have well designed and maintained systems.
A wired solution can absolutely have lower latency, but what latency are you okay with and are you willing to pay for much lower latency that you don't need? Consider the following scenario:
- wired provider latency = 20ms at a cost of $100/month
- wireless 5G provider latency = 40ms at a cost of $35/month
Assuming equal bandwidth would it be worth it to you to pay $65 extra dollars per month for 10ms less latency? How many consumers do you think care that much that are only streaming netflix, checking email, playing phone based mobile games? Those are real example costs from my area. If you are a Verizon cell phone customer can get from 100Mbs to 300Mbs at about 40ms latency for $35/month.
— it really only makes sense to sell this stuff in rural areas without the infrastructure. What’s more is the most recent carrier has a reputation for extraordinary coverage but their network is CDMA so their network speed is one of the worst in the city.
We're talking 5g here. It would be a really bad solution for rural areas. 5g is fast, but because of the broadcast frequencies the signal doesn't travel very far. Thats why you see so many more smaller 5g towers than tall 4g. A single 5g tower in a dense urban area can serve hundreds of customers, where that same tower in rural may serve 10 or less because the distance to customers is so much larger.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell this stuff elsewhere?
Nope, cities are the perfect market for 5g home internet. Zero wiring costs in high density urban residential spaces especially where incumbent wired providers have been abusing their customers for decades means customers are open to alternatives, especially at lower prices with better customer service.
Yeah, if it's cheaper it definitely makes sense. And in the US it might be the only way to get some competition in that market.
Yeah I have Verizon's 5G Home Internet. It costs roughly the same as the local cable company's service with similar latency and far better speeds and reliability. I've had one total outage over the last four years that lasted a few hours, and they gave me the month for free as compensation.
I don't see a reason to switch back to the cable company (my apartment isn't equipped for fiber so the local ISP offering fiber isn't an option).
I was getting 20ms latency on starlink in the Rockies last week while my coworker in Utah on fiber was getting 50ms. So yeah the provider really really matters lol.
Because people buy it.
Most folks are not as tech savvy as the people on Lemmy.
Most people don’t know the difference between cable, fiber, DSL, or wireless. It’s just “internet.”
Heh. In fairness, some of those people check their email every single Tuesday, and have no idea what kind of speeds they're missing out on.
True. Tuesday is when the email mail comes in big cities.
To my step-kids, it’s all “WiFi.” Even on their phone driving down the highway, I’ll hear, “this WiFi sucks!”
You’ve got a point. I recently set up a modem and router for friends and they were shocked when I told them they have a local network that their devices can talk to each other on. They thought WiFi == Internet.
Many times, these aren't direct representatives of the company providing the service, but mlm type organizations.
They should do it remotely. Also Jehovah's witnesses should do their rounds remotely. Then I can just route both towards each other or right into the pihole.
right into the pihole.
😂
I think the 5g value really depends on like the exact neighborhood you're in, based on proximity to the towers, so it makes sense for them to target by address. Also, as a Nextdoor reader, I can tell you lots of people have no idea what their options are and if they weren't exactly the same people who think a doorbell is a prelude to murder these sales might actually make sense.
Because our government used tax dollars to create the net and then they sold it out to private entities so we could keep paying for what we already did to develop. Also, ISPs are cancer. It'd be much cheaper and better as a utility.
Because they already built the towers, so going door to door to pick up more revenue makes sense, even if your market is saturated.
Maybe someone is fed up with their current experience, maybe they are gullible, maybe they just want to talk to some nice salesman and will buy the product for the company.
Because they want to be lazy and get your business at the same time for measurable worse internet speeds and latency.
Much lower overhead than running fiber or anything else in the ground since it's only 1 pole that serves a larger area.
We tried out the T-Mobile 5G for a couple of days. Blew our cable connection out of the water speedwise, with comparable latency, at what would have been less than half the cost. But the AP provides next to no configuration options - can't even turn off the WiFi and use it as a bridge to a proper router. So back it went.
Not saying cable connection would be faster, when I was in Tennessee on 5g I was seeing speeds of 700/350.
But the latency was noticeable longer than a fiber connection, for reference with ATT fiber I can get 5-6ms, over the ATT 5g network I was averaging 80ms.
I average about 20ms (Comcast over WiFi). TMo was about 30ms. I just checked my cell connection (also ATT 5g), and matched your 80ms. Not sure what the Comcast ping would be wired, but I don't run anything significant over Ethernet. The jump from 5ms to 30ms is noticeable with gaming for sure. But in my use case, the latency difference would have been negligible.
Not even DMZ and using the DMZ device with external APs? It's not great compared to just using the ISP device as a modem, but it's better than nothing.
I'm sure something could be done on the LAN side. I know just enough about networking to know I don't want to fool with it any more than I have to lol. The setup I have now works because the cable modem is just a modem/gateway. It's not trying to be its own network.
But regardless of any efforts on my part, the AP is stuck with whatever black box software TMo is running. That WiFi signal is gonna be going 24/7. Can't disable it, can't define the IP space, can't restrict what can connect to it, etc. Just not liking that idea.
Put up a No Solicitors sign?
I’ve got one, it doesn’t really do anything
I think this is likely a sort of Cutco Knives type thing (less the pre-buying of inventory). But at least in parts of Oregon they'll hire people for cheap and give them lofty allures of commissions - which never really happen before the salesperson burns out and quits.
I only know this because my friend got sucked into it for a year before realizing nobody was buying or cared.